‘You bet!’ Ant said. ‘Absolutely brilliant, Lance. Thanks a lot.’
Lia offered to keep Ant’s fish fingers warm in the oven. Ant went into the bedroom while Lia and Lance settled down to eat their tea. The material was really stiff and Ant had to wriggle around to get comfortable. He looked at himself in the mirror.
The suit was a boring grey with a small, white Crunch Hut thunderbolt logo sewn on to the front with yellow thread. It seemed nothing like the amazing-sounding suit Griff kept boasting about at school. The stitching on the logo was coming loose and it clearly wasn’t that well made. Still, if Ray-Chay was as incredible as everyone said, it wouldn’t matter. Ant squeezed on the funny-looking, sucker-lined headset and plugged it into the suit via a short cable. Then he voice-activated the game with a code printed on a small tag hanging from the sleeve. Now the suit would recognise Ant’s voice and only he would be able to use it. At first his head felt like a shaken bottle of pop, but the sensation didn’t last long. A little old ghost monkey appeared, introduced himself as Kyto and began a speech, ‘Let me take you to another world…’ Ant copied Kyto’s slow, rhythmic movements for a few minutes before the proper game began.
It was weird. Ant found it impossible to focus on the shapes and colours, heights and depths. He tried to move and he fell over. He felt dizzy and a bit sick. Lance had warned him about this.
When Ant started making sense of what he could see, it was even weirder.
Surely he knew this place? Wasn’t this planet Aneome in Kismet Cosmos? Ant walked a few steps and looked down. There, three hundred metres below, thundered the sparkling Arkenbarc River. Above him rose Warriot’s Peak, majestic against the cloudless blue sky. When he looked down at himself, he was wearing his avatar Tarn’s skin.
Ant really loved planet Aneome, it was probably his favourite planet so far in Kismet, even though he was now on a different level in the real game. Everything was right about this version, yet everything was wrong, too. There were none of the signs of life he was used to: no fluttersects, zephyrbirds or hommerabbits, let alone Pradahl, who was always somewhere nearby, usually getting into trouble. The ghost monkey was only there to give him training instructions and wasn’t a real part of the game.
He knew it would take several Ray-Chay levels before the enteos began appearing. Then, presumably, the game would start getting as exciting as everyone said. It was impressive how much more he felt inside this virtual world because of the Ray-Chay suit. Yet what was the point, when Ant had a much more thrilling version of the game, where he’d already reached the ninety-sixth planet? There were still puzzle paths to solve and jewel keys to find in Kismet Cosmos. There were still new planets to fly to and fabulous dragon-skin suits to earn.
It didn’t take long for Ant to feel bored. He deactivated the game and removed the headset. He wriggled out of the stiff suit, wondering if anyone else had spotted that this great new game was actually a shameless copy of Kismet Cosmos. Oh, but of course, no one had played Kismet in years, had they? Crunch Hut had simply decided to ‘recycle’ its first game, thinking that no one would notice. How lame was that?
Like everyone into gaming, Ant was a huge admirer of coding genius Kody Crunch. Kody and his twin sister Kelly had set up Crunch Hut while they were still teenagers. Kelly had dropped off the scene long ago and no one seemed to remember her any more. Kody had gone from strength to strength and was one of the richest, coolest and most successful guys in gaming, living on his own private Caribbean island. In each new advert he would ride up on a jet ski or land his helicopter on some spectacular cliff, point his finger pistols at the camera and tell everyone to buy his latest game. Ant thought the ads were horribly cheesy but the games themselves were fantastic. Up until this one.
Ant picked up his Kismet headset and ran his thumb over the worn Crunch Hut logo. ‘How do you think you can get away with this, Kody?’ he whispered. ‘The game’s so lame. The original’s a million times better.’ Ah well, it was disappointing, but even geniuses got it wrong sometimes.
That evening, Lance asked whether he liked Ray-Chay and Ant admitted he hadn’t got into it yet. When Lance asked him again the following day, Ant said something similar. He didn’t want to disappoint Lance but he didn’t think he was ever going to get into Ray-Chay. He didn’t see the point of it.
4
The Rareio
Four months later everyone was playing Ray-Chay. The cheaper suits had been released, which meant you didn’t need to be rich in order to play. Griff was disgusted by the stiff grey suits, but he did enjoy the company. He’d promised his parents he’d only play online with friends he knew in real life. He knew never to get friendly with strangers online or agree to meet up, because they might not be who they claimed.
Every day after school, Griff would meet Lyle and Boom in his virtual adventure-play world, where they would race, chase, collect and destroy enteos together as a team. None of them realised that the worlds they played in were all different: Lyle’s world was a war zone, while Boom’s was a kind of monster-truck superdrome. The enteos they found were all alike, however.
Something else disgusted Griff: his mum, Paula, had bought an expensive, spangly, pink Ray-Chay suit of her own, complete with bunny ears and a tail. Ray-Chay had become popular with adults because it was a great,
